[SPARCbook] Sparcbook 3GX -Upgrade

[Ken Hansen]

Well, here comes the bad news... (See below)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dennis Hayes" <dennis.hayes at nexsi.com>
To: <sparcbook at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 9:35 AM
Subject: [SPARCbook] Sparcbook 3GX -Upgrade


> Group,
>
> Hello, I am new to this group.

Welcome!

> Need your assistance. I have a Sparcbook 3GX that I want to upgrade
> to Solaris 2.7 software. Before I perform the OS upgrade I need/want to
> upgrade my HD from 1.2G to 10G  system.

Nice ambitions...

> Question:
> (1) Where can I purchase 10G IDE HD for 3GX system? Tadpole price is
> expensive. If someone
> installed different vendor HD, what issues or problems?

www.powerbook1.com sells a 6.4 Gig HD with suitable adapter for $400 - yes,
the HD w/o adapter can be found cheaper, but the adapter sells for $175
alone, if you can convince them to sell them (reports are they are willing
to do this, but I don't know of anyone that actually bought just the
adapter)

> (2) Where can I purchase Solaris 2.7 for Sparcbook. Again Tadpole too
> expensive.

To run Solaris 7 on your Tadpole 3GX *properly* (meaning framebuffer
support, power-saving, other) you need the Tadpole extensions. These are
*only* available from Tadpole. The only way Tadpole is offering these
extensions is on a CD-ROM with a full license for (and copy of) Solaris 7.

> (3)I would like to upgrade from 128M memory to 512M or better 1G memory.
> Where can I
> purchase compatible memory for 3GX? Are there any known issues that I need
> to be aware of?

Yes - the 3GX will only support 128 Meg of RAM, and that requires
proprietary RAM SIMMs, available only from Tadpole. Others *opinions*
differ, but I have no confirmed reports of anything else beoing possible.

As a hard limit, I think the hardware in the 3GX can only handle 8x 32 Meg
SIMMs, as a result of being based on the microSPARC 110 MHz CPU (this is the
max an SS/5 can handle, and I suspect the CPU was built with that max. in
mind).

The 3GX is (essentially) an SS/5 clone, and it inherits all the limitiations
that design imposes.

An Ultrabook would probably be more suitable, but there was another model,
the 3000 SPARCbook, that could take up to 256 Meg of RAM and is based on the
170 MHz TurboSPARC CPU.

Others will say I am wrong, but I stand by my claims...

Ken